The Updater app automates many of the steps of updating an ownCloud
installation. You should keep your ownCloud server updated and not skip any
releases. The Updater app is enabled in your ownCloud Server instance by
default, which you can confirm by looking on your Apps page.

Note

The Updater app is not enabled and not supported in ownCloud
Enterprise edition.

Downgrading is not supported and risks corrupting your data! If you want
to revert to an older ownCloud version, install it from scratch and then
restore your data from backup. Before doing this, file a support ticket (if
you have paid support) or ask for help in the ownCloud forums to see if your
issue can be resolved without downgrading.

The Updater App is not required, and it is recommended to use other methods for
keeping your ownCloud server up-to-date, if possible. (See How to Upgrade Your ownCloud Server.) The
Updater App is useful for installations that do not have root access,
such as shared hosting, for installations with a smaller number of users
and data, and it automates updating
manual installations.

You should maintain regular backups (see Backing up ownCloud), and make a backup
before every update. The Updater app does not backup your database or data
directory.

Navigate to your Admin page and click the Update Center button under
Updater. This takes you to the Updater control panel.

Click Update, and carefully read the messages. If there are any problems it
will tell you. The most common issue is directory permissions; your HTTP
user needs write permissions to your whole ownCloud directory. (See
Setting Permissions for Updating.) Otherwise you will see messages
about checking your installation and making backups.

Click Proceed, and then it performs the remaining steps, which takes a few
minutes.

If your directory permissions are correct, a backup was made, and
downloading the new ownCloud archive succeeded you will see a screen with
the Start Update button. Click Start Update. to complete your update.

Note

If you have a large ownCloud installation, at this point you
should use the occupgrade command, running it as your HTTP user,
instead of clicking the Start Update button, in order to avoid PHP
timeouts. The occ command does not download ownCloud updates.
You must first download and install the updated code, and then occ
performs the final upgrade steps. This example is for Ubuntu Linux:

$ sudo -u www-data php occ upgrade

Before completing the upgrade, ownCloud first runs a simulation by copying all
database tables to new tables, and then performs the upgrade on them, to ensure
that the upgrade will complete correctly. The copied tables are deleted after
the upgrade. This takes twice as much time, which on large installations can be
many hours, so you can omit this step with the --skip-migration-test
option, like this example on Ubuntu:

It runs for a few minutes, and when it is finished displays a success message,
which disappears after a short time.

Refresh your Admin page to verify your new version number. In the Updater
section of your Admin page you can see the current status and old backups. These
are backups of your old and new ownCloud installations, and do not contain your
data files. If your update works and there are no problems you can delete the
backups from this screen.

If you can’t login to your ownCloud installation without performing an update
first, this means that updated ownCloud files have already been downloaded to
your server, most likely via your Linux package manager during a routine system
update. So you only need to click the Start Update button, or run the occ
command to complete the update.

For hardened security we highly recommend setting the permissions on your
ownCloud directory as strictly as possible. These commands should be executed
immediately after the initial installation. Please follow the steps in
Setting Strong Directory Permissions.

These strict permissions will prevent the Updater app from working, as it needs
your whole ownCloud directory to be owned by the HTTP user. Run this script to
set the appropriate permissions for updating. Replace the ocpath variable
with the path to your ownCloud directory, and replace the htuser and
htgroup variables with your HTTP user and group.: